Latest / That's Not Spit, It's Condensation! / #211: Why You Don’t Play Like Yourself at Orchestral Auditions

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#211: Why You Don’t Play Like Yourself at Orchestral Auditions · That's Not Spit, It's Condensation!

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the minute, it is it's condensation.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: If you've been taking orchestral auditions for a while, you're probably already aware of the things that you're supposed to be doing to be prepared.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: You're organized, you're recording yourself regularly, you're running mock auditions, you're putting in the hours.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: But even though you're doing all of this, you've probably still had an experience where you knew that you could play the excerpts in the practice room.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: But once you got on stage at the audition, with the committee listening and the pressure being on, something changed.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't end up representing yourself the way you know you can.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if you've had that experience, it's probably really important for you to figure out what's going on and how to fix it.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because until you do, every audition that you take has a chance to end up being another example of not representing your best playing, even though you did everything you knew how to do to prepare.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to That's Not Spit.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's condensation.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Ryan Beach.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm Kathleen Costello.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: And together, Kathleen and I, we run a coaching program that helps classical musicians improve their audition process so they get better results at orchestral auditions.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: We teach a system that took me from seven straight auditions without advancing to a principal trumpet trial and the Atlanta Symphony and the finals for Principal Trumpet of the Philadelphia Orchestra and back-to-back auditions.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Since then, we've also taught that same system to many clients and helped them improve their results as well.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: In this episode, we're going to talk about why the things you're supposed to do to prepare for auditions don't always get you playing on stage and representing you the way you want to be represented.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to talk about the biggest thing that musicians who are struggling with this are missing.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to name and define the exact state that you need to be in to represent yourself the way you want to be represented in an audition and to play like yourself.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: So before we begin, very quickly, we know understanding what it takes to win an orchestral audition can be confusing.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to know what committees are looking for and how do you need to play to succeed.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want a deep dive into what we believe goes into winning an audition, you can download our free winning auditions workbook.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: This workbook will take you through the most important parts of what goes into winning an audition step by step.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: The link is in the description below.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Kathleen, do you want to take us through the topic that we're going to cover for today?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: When they're playing in the practice room, most players feel a kind of freedom.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's a safe environment.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody's judging you.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: You get multiple tries to accomplish whatever you're working on.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: And once you get something right, then you have the evidence that you can do it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's an exploratory space.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: You're fixing things, solving problems.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: And this is often where we feel most comfortable accessing our potential.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: So then you get into a high-stakes performance or audition, and all of a sudden you're very aware that you're being judged.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you start measuring yourself against other people, players you hear warming up, people you see in the hallway, or maybe even just, you know, imaginary players you've invented that you are imagining are more qualified and better than you are.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: So it's easy to tell yourself a story at this point, you know, with this pressure on.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: Now I have to do it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: Now this is when it really matters.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you start worrying about making mistakes or hoping that what you have to offer on stage will be good enough.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: So then you start overanalyzing things you've done a hundred times can suddenly feel really hard.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: Your focus starts to go, your brain might feel scrambled.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Some people even freeze in this situation.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: Or very common, you start focusing on the committee.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: And what is the committee thinking about me?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's so easy to let your mind wander to wondering about how they are receiving your playing.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: So all of this adds up to a headspace that's unfocused and divided, which means that number one, it can be very difficult to concentrate on your playing.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: And number two, it can lead you to feeling completely overwhelmed by the experience.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: So when you're trying to perform in that state, I'm gonna say it plainly.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: It blocks access to your best playing.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: Often it leads to overtrying or to manipulating your playing to try to force a result.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: And that's exactly why players who did really well in the practice room have trouble recreating that playing on stage.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: They're in a completely different headspace.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a lot of common answers to this, a lot of common reasons that people, or or let's say solutions that people may come up with.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: The first one is the most common.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: They just think they need to practice more.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: They go to an audition and then it doesn't work out, or they don't represent themselves, and they think, well, I guess I got to practice more.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe somebody told them, well, maybe you didn't work hard enough.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: And don't get me wrong, like you do need to spend quality time in the practice room to reach your goals.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: There's no doubt about that.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: But it's important to understand that you can spend hundreds of hours in the practice room and still not understand what actually leads you to representing yourself well on stage.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can put in those hours and they you might you can put in those hours and not realize that it's just not moving you any closer to your actual goal.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, other players think I need to do more mock auditions.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: I can think of a specific player I'm thinking of who had an audition, didn't play as well as she wanted to, and her answer was, well, I just didn't I didn't run as many mock, I didn't perform as much as I wanted to.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I just wasn't used to the act of performing.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And like we actually agree with there's a whole entire phase of our preparation that's dedicated towards mock auditions.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: But like the previous point, when you don't understand what the end goal of audition preparation is, it's totally possible to do many mock rounds and still not end up representing yourself well at auditions.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then this is like a kind of an interesting third one because I can think of a specific scenario I was in where someone was recommending this to me, and I've heard this a lot, and that it's the solution to being able to represent yourself better is to just care less or to not care at all.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you like to like I said, to represent yourself, you just simply need not to care.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Which, like, if you can do this, it probably does work.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you've we've you know, we've heard those stories where somebody, you know, didn't care and they won that audition or whatever.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: So there's some element of truth to this, but here's what I've experienced personally.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: When I get to an audition and I'm trying not to care, it doesn't really work, right?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've got all sorts of thoughts that end up happening.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so I end up just thinking about how much I care, right?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Don't think about an elephant right now.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: What are you thinking about?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you're trying saying, okay, I don't care, I don't care.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: All you're thinking about is the fact that you care, and of course you care, right?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Why would you be there at that audition if you didn't care to some degree?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the secret isn't not caring, the secret is understanding how to care and still represent yourself well on stage.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: To have the confidence that you can actually engage with your desire to win and then channel that in a way that it doesn't throw you off your game.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: So we've we've heard these anecdotal stories from people, you know, just like what you were just saying.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: Some people will say, Well, I, you know, had no success until I went in there and said, I don't care, and then they won.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: Or the person that, you know, said they just did so many mocks that there was just no reason to be nervous and then they found success.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: So we're not saying these things are, you know, that all of them are not important or that they can't work as a solution that solves the problem for some people.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: But what we are saying is essentially it's not a strategy for winning.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's a strategy of throwing everything you can at the process and just hoping for the best.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: Or I'll try anything I haven't tried, right?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: And unfortunately, the longer you do that and it continues not to work the way that you hope, the more evidence you're collecting that it isn't going to work out, right?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: Or it's just never gonna work.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's how some people go to the full extreme, right?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: So again, this doesn't apply to everyone.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if you had success really early, or if you just got on the audition circuit, maybe this, what we're talking about right now, hasn't hit home for you yet.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: But if you've been taking auditions for a long time with little success or middling success, you probably know the feeling, that nagging feeling that what you were doing just isn't working.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's something other people understand that you just haven't figured out yet.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: And for some people, that frustration turns into if I can't figure this out, maybe I have to give up on auditions altogether or just change feels.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: Do do something else entirely.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that can get really heavy.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it it feels like bad news, right?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you're in the middle of this, it feels like it, like yeah, Kathleen said, it can feel really heavy.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: But there is good news, and that's what we're gonna talk about now.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you're struggling with this, it's just because no one has ever explained what's actually going on, right?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And once you understand what's actually going on, you're gonna see that it's absolutely possible for you to represent yourself well on stage, to play like yourself, to wait, play the way you know you can in the practice room.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: And and the thing that's the thing that if it's you you're struggling, or the thing that players who are struggling with this, the thing that they're missing is that the state that you do your best playing in, it has a name.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's likely a state that every musician has been in at some point.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I want you to think about a great performance or a memorable performance that you have that you remember.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'll just just take a second, and something will likely pop in your head.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would ask, like, what made you think of that performance?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the when we've done this, when we've asked people about this and clients, usually people say something like, I played really well, I was just in the music, I wasn't worried, I wasn't nervous, I really enjoyed it.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for a lot of people, these experiences are what make them want to do music in the first place.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: We connect with this.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: If it could feel like this all the time, what and I could get paid money for this, what a life, right?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: It might be what drove you into music in the first place, that feeling.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Again, like I was just saying, it's addictive.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: It can also feel like magic, it can feel elusive, like, oh, I was in it that one time, but I can't, I can't get back to that place.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And we're all just chasing that feeling.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe some people, yeah, it seems like they can just get there easily and just perform with that that you know, that kind of ease, but others just don't have it.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're one of the people who feels like you don't have it, it's frustrating because if you do not understand what something is, it's very hard to calibrate towards it and actually create it.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so this state where you do your best playing, it's called flow state.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's not magic, you can't force it, but it does have conditions, and when you understand them, you can practice and work towards creating them, which is going to give you a much better chance of achieving flow state.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so excited we're getting to talk about this topic today.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's something I'm really passionate about.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, anybody who knows me has probably heard me say, talk about this at some point.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so what is flow state?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Once we start describing it, you will realize you have probably experienced it.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like Ryan was saying, it's gonna sound familiar.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: So, for example, if you've ever played a concert or even had a practice session where you were really in it, two hours flew by and you didn't even know what happened, that's flow.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: If you were ever had to play something incredibly difficult, and at certain moments it felt like time slowed down, like you could pay attention to every single tiny detail.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's flow.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: If you've ever felt totally absorbed in the music, almost had like that out-of-body experience when you weren't just playing, but you were a part of the whole thing.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's flow state.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: If you've ever played and you weren't thinking about your mistakes or your nerves or the audience, but just the music, and you felt merged with the music, you were creating the sound, you were making that's flow.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the answer to why your best performances happened.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: You weren't luckier those days, you were just in a different state.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's very possible that if you haven't heard of flow state, you've likely heard of it by one of its other names.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, one that comes to mind is like being in the zone, and that gets thrown around with sports a lot as well, playing out of your mind.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's one we read in the intergame of tennis.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: So also kind of from a sports genre or for musicians being completely in the music.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, these are just a few.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: There are actually many more.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I think one of the reasons for the mystery around this subject, the lack of a common agreed-upon terminology.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that is sorry, excuse me, that is part of the mystery.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have like a common term that we're all using to describe this.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: So for our work, we have adopted the term flow state for a couple of important reasons.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: The first, um, this name is given by Hungarian-American psychologist Mihai Cheeksent Mihai, who is widely considered to be the father of this research.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he did extensive research studying people from all over the world, diverse cultures, diverse income levels, age groups.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: And he came to the conclusion that experiences with this state called flow state are universal.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the second reason we like to use the term flow is that it's a fairly decent description of what the state actually feels like.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: Things are flowing forward in an organic manner.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: It has an impression of natural ease.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it feels like just being along for the ride.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sorry, I had a client who described this as like somebody else was playing.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like it he he was saying it doesn't always feel this way.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I can he can distinctly there's a few times when he's practicing where he's like, yeah, it's like somebody else is has inhabited my body and is playing, and I'm just there sort of observing it happening.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of another interesting description of flow.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry to interrupt.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's okay.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um the most important thing about flow is that it has conditions that you can you can like plan for that you meet can meet to get the experience.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: And the most important condition is being able to concentrate on the task at hand, to be in the present moment.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: So that's really the one we're gonna kind of kind of focus on today.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't know how to keep your attention in the present moment, flow becomes difficult, if not impossible, to access.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that's when we feel that self-consciousness come in, when the over trying starts and everything we were talking about earlier.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: In flow, you're kind of just letting things happen, letting things be.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: You're completely absorbed and concentrated on the present moment.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: Because we've researched flow, we've recognized it in ourselves and in our own best performances.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: And when we ask other players to describe their best performances and, you know, online polls or calls with clients, um, they just inevitably describe some aspect of flow state.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: So every time, you know, in our coaching program, once we started pointing clients towards flow as the goal, they got better at building it into their practice.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: And we started seeing different results with them on stage, more confident performances, more trust in their abilities, players who weren't advancing before starting to advance.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's not the only piece of the puzzle.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: There can be other things that could be holding you back.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: But if you know you can play better than you are currently at auditions, this very well might be the answer.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why we believe that training your attention to stay in that present moment should actually be the primary goal of your practice.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I want to cover for me, it's important to cover like how could this change things for you so you really get the full picture.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: The first thing it does is we've already talked about it gives you clarity on the end goal of your audition preparation process.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: So a flow state is the state that you play your best in, where you will represent your you have access to all of your skill.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's a way we've described it, where you will represent yourself at your best.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: Once you understand that that is the end goal, you can see that at a minimum, your practice needs to develop the ability to keep your attention locked on the task at hand in the present moment, right?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you can't do that, flow isn't accessible.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is why Kathleen was just saying, this is why our approach has shifted towards thinking of our practice primarily as attention training.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: We are trying to bias the way we practice toward producing flow state, both in practice, but primarily in a pressure moment so that you can represent yourself the best.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: When you can do that, when you can prove to yourself in practice that you can keep your attention there, you're showing yourself you can meet those conditions, which is gonna give you that confidence in the actual audition.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I want to make it clear there's different types of flow, and we're not gonna get into those right now, but just so you know, you're not necessarily gonna feel that same kind of flow in the practice room that we described earlier, where you know, time goes by quickly or slowly or what, you know, you might feel those things.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And but we you may not feel those things.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: So what's important about your practice is not so much actually feeling flow, it's about using your practice to figure out what to focus on so that when you're in the present moment, when you're in the pressure moment, excuse me, you know where to take your attention, and then you can give yourself the best possible chance to get into flow.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you're really using practice to figure out how do I meet those conditions, and then do that in the audition.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because getting into a flow state at audition helps for a lot of reasons.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: The main one is that you represent yourself at your best.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: You sound great, you play your best, simply put.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: But flow is also a state of optimal enjoyment, too.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: So this is how somebody could actually walk into an audition and walk away saying, I had a great time.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: We had a client who said that he won an audition he took, but kind of the most striking thing he said is I just wanted to keep playing.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: He was actually enjoying the act of an audition, which is kind of crazy.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we also believe that flow state is the answer to when people say I played perfectly, but I didn't advance, but this other player made mistakes and they did advance.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you've ever felt that we believe flow state is the answer to why did that player advance and maybe you didn't?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: The players that are advancing and winning auditions, it's not because they're perfect, it's because they let go and they achieve some amount of flow state, they're able to represent themselves at their best, and they're able to gain enough trust with the committee to advance and win.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I just want you to think about from this perspective that we're sharing here.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: What if you could go to an audition, you could play your best, represent your best, maybe even enjoy it?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: What if you could walk into an audition knowing that the process you'd go through was good and you trusted it and you knew you were going to represent yourself well.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Not hope yourself, but new.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: What would that be like for you?
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: How could that change things?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: As with most things, the things holding players back from being in flow state is this is gonna vary from person to person.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: So we're not necessarily going to pretend there's some easy hack that skips the hard part and takes you straight to the end.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: The reality is that the more you try to get into flow state, the less likely it is to happen, unfortunately.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: And the best analogy I can think of is it's kind of like trying to fall asleep if you're having trouble.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: That that's, you know, that's like kind of like a guaranteed way to like not actually be able to fall asleep.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: So instead, just like as if we were trying to increase our likelihood of getting a good night's sleep, we choose to focus on meeting the conditions for flow state in our practice and then eventually in performance as well.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: We already mentioned that the most important condition, and this is in our opinion, is concentrating on the task at hand in the present moment.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: To aid in your ability to accomplish this, we're gonna offer three more um conditions for flow state that you can explore.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: So the first one is clear goals.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's significantly easier to stay in the present moment and focus on the task at hand when you have clarity on exactly where you want to keep your focus.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: So instead of just hammering away at your excerpts, you know, repeating, repeating, repeating, taking the time to clarify what you do want to be focused on while practicing will dramatically increase your ability to stay in the present moment and to achieve flow in the practice session, potentially, and then also potentially in an audition as well.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so very closely paired with that, with the clear goals, is immediate feedback.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: So when you're practicing, you need that immediate feedback to know whether you accomplished what your clear goal was.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: So, meaning, did you do the thing you wanted to do when you focused on the thing you chose to focus on?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's a bit of a mouthful, but you know, did you did you get what you were looking for?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: So obviously, you know, recording yourself is pretty important in this one.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: going to be an amazing tool for accessing this immediate feedback in that you know you want to you want you really need this clarity and that feedback is going to help get you there in order to focus you know eventually in that um pressure moment getting the results that you want finally um and this one's huge is what we call the skill challenge balance so if the challenge level you're working at when you're practicing is too hard you'll likely be focused on all the mistakes or just how frustrated you're getting at your playing rather than being able to focus on those clear goals I was talking about a minute ago.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then if the challenge is too easy, if we miss it on the other side, then your focus has a tendency to wander away from you.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: And often that that's when we kind of get bored or realize that we're like you know planning what we're having for dinner or you know maybe it's even like it goes to all the things that you're worried about.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: So calibrating this challenge of practice to the level of your current skill or slightly just beyond your current level this might this probably gonna be a topic for future podcasts to like deal with this exact nuance that I'm talking about right now that is crucial for keeping your focus on the task at hand in the present moment.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah so those are some some things you can engage with to be able to explore what does it really mean to keep my attention on the task at hand in the present moment.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Again being able to use that as a condition to meet to get into flow state.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now some people might say I don't need any of that I just need to get better at my instrument right all that's fine but if I just got better at my instrument you know then I would be able to get into flow state.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so maybe right and and especially somebody thinking well it's not about flow state to win an audition I just need to improve right and so maybe for some people that may be true.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: But flow is how you access what you're already capable of.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so it is very possible that somebody needs to improve their skill to win.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: But like what if you're already capable of winning an audition right now but you're so preoccupied with not being good enough that you won't practice in a way that trains you to represent yourself well because you don't think you're ready.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like basically what if you could win an audition right now if you just found flow state and let it happen?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: What if you have enough skill already?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: If that's possible it's important to figure out flow state whether you need to improve at your skill or not because that's how you're going to access your level of skill.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's important to think about from that perspective.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: And you know we work with players who have already won jobs and some of them still struggle with feeling like they aren't good enough.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you've already won a job is that actually true right sometimes it might be like I feel I had won a job but I had improvements in terms of my skill that I needed to make before I could be successful in places like Atlanta or Philly.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: But there are many players who actually have enough skill to win a job they just can't access it when it matters most.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: They can't represent themselves when they when it matters most so we think you need to figure out flow state at any stage and when you understand it you know how to get there you're going to be able to represent yourself at your best on stage.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that wins you the audition but even if it doesn't every audition after that you'll be able to represent yourself at your best level of skill that you've built at that next level so it's important for those reasons.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah so some things that we hear also me potentially in objection to this idea and um this is a really interesting one and that would be this is supposed to be hard right so you know it is hard right preparing for an audition is hard.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: We're not actually making the argument that there isn't a lot of sacrifice and um sweat that goes into preparing for an audition um you know as orchestral musicians we spend a lot of energy making sure people understand how much work goes into what we do and that's important right so that you know we we get so many comments oh you get to do what you love for a living you get to play.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: It must be so fun and so easy right and um we feel like maybe that reputationally it's important to argue that you know this takes years of years and years of dedication.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: So we're not arguing with that.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: But in flow things can feel effortless organic natural almost like you're not the one who's driving the bus like we talked about earlier.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: So for a lot of us myself included that's where this started that feeling when we were younger and everything just it seemed to come more easily right and that's like the reason that we fell in love with music in the first place.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: The longer you're in the field, the more you feel like you can drift away from this until the idea that playing could feel effortless almost sounds like something to push back against, right?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: But what if it doesn't have to be as hard as you think when you understand flow practice can be so much less frustrating and so much more engaging.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know how to navigate a practice session and letting go and enjoying a performance becomes possible and may even get you to that effortless feeling.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: Accessing that state is not lowering the bar.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's allowing you to get back to the thing that made you fall in love with music in the first place.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that's going to be all for this episode.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Again if you want to deep dive into what we believe goes into winning an audition don't forget to download the free winning auditions workbook.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: You can check out that link in the description and next week we're gonna sit down with a client who went from getting cut in preliminary rounds at auditions to making the finals of an audition with the Houston Symphony going to hear from him and how he did that.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we will see you in the next episode.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for being here